This is (so far anyway) my personal favorite dating site. It's free, relatively easy to use, and has matched me up with the most intriguing people. I plan to use it to make friends as well as find romantic/sex partners. I'm not sure if it would work as well for someone who is, well, less of a weirdo than me. Both subjects I interviewed are my weirdo peers, so I'd be interested in hear from someone in a more conventional crowd.
The site uses only one, really long, test, consisting of multiple-choice questions after which you can indicate how important your prospective partner's responses to the same questions are. You only need to have a basic profile filled out in order to start using the site, however, and you can answer some of these questions every time you visit, so every time, you make it easier and easier (supposedly) for the site to find you a perfect match.
The profile has an option for stating that you're in an open relationship, which I find refreshing. But there's no "NeoPagan" option for "religion." The site will not notify your main email account if someone emails you on the site, so you must log in periodically to check.
My main complaint about the site is that the age group tends to be very young. Most of the users are in their 20s. But hopefully that will change!
I interviewed T.A., a 42-year-old hetero man in HI, and O.I., is a 33-year-old hetero man in MA.
T.A. says, "This is sort of difficult to complain about, but here goes. If you believe this site, all the straight/bi women in Hawaii are younger than 30; most are 18-25. Having looked in other geographic areas, this seems a flaw replicated throughout the site; the majority of people on this site are twenty-somethings. Not a 'flaw,' necessarily, but not ideal from the perspective of a 42-year-old reviewer :-/. For some reason, I am not of interest to the 18-25 crowd. Can't think why. And, to be fair, I don’t think I’d be interested in any of them, although many are quite decorative :-) On the plus side for our poly subject, "For some reason a large number of members of this site seem to be polyamorous; this may be due to word of mouth marketing among the poly communities online (mailing lists, alt.poly etc.)."
Both subjects were happy with the ease of use. T.A. says, "The site runs quickly, with minimal graphics." O.I., "It's a fairly clean and simple interface; fun to use."
"You need not answer all the questions," said T.A., "but there are unsubtle reminders that you should answer more questions sprinkled throughout the site." He continues, "I doubt that their testing component is as 'scientific' as the site states, but it's interesting in concept and well done in execution. I have some doubts about their categorization of people (they use a 4x2 matrix of categories: each person receives one of 2 values in each of 4 areas, i.e. random/deliberate, gentle/brutal, sex/love, master/dreamer, and is assigned a 'name' from these results ('The Last Man on Earth,' 'Ghengis Khunt,' and 'The Hornivore' are some of the more amusing examples). There does not seem to have been any attempt to vary the categories based on orientation."
O.I. found their method "very clever, and the people it matches you up with are almost always very good matches. Other users trust the system too, so if you write to someone with a high match value, they will likely be predisposed to want to talk to you once they see the match value."
T.A. continues, "There aren't many extras right now. There is a mildly interesting 'photo-match' area, where you randomly look at pictures and answer yes/maybe/no; the use to which this information is put is unclear, however."
T.A. says, "This site has loads of potential, especially if they can expand their membership out of the 20-somethings to a broader range of people. The price is right -– I'd even be willing to pay some for this, if I thought any of the members would be interested in dating me (i.e., if there were more older members."
"OK Cupid's main flaw," says O.I., "is that it selects who to show you from an arbitrary subset of the profiles it has, and there's no way to make it go look for a new subset. There may be many people who match well with you but whose profiles won't be on your 'matches' page. Other flaws: There is no clear way to give them feedback or ask questions, although of the two issues I wrote them email about, I did get a prompt response on one. There's no email notification of responses to your profile, so you have to log in to check."
